In the land of ABBA, cash is no longer king
It’s an oft-repeated irony. The ABBA Museum in downtown Stockholm doesn’t accept cash.
“We don’t handle bills and coins because we believe that cashless is more safe and efficient for our visitors and for our staff,” reads the notice on the museum’s website.
ABBA band member Bjorn Ulvaeus was even more dismissive of tactile currency when he recently told The New York Times: “We don’t want to be behind the times by taking cash while cash is dying out.”
Ulvaeus’ attitude is apparently well entrenched. Swedes have embraced non-cash payments so enthusiastically that the country’s central bank — the Riksbank — earlier this year took the step of calling on the government to mandate that banks to provide cash services as a basic feature of ordinary bank accounts. The Riksbank was concerned that banks have been eliminating basic cash services such as automatic telling machines too quickly, depriving some Swedes of freedom of choice when it comes to how they pay for things.
What’s behind the shift to cash? An important catalyst is Swish, a software app launched in 2012 by six Swedish banks. Originally set up to allow customers to use their mobile phones to transfer money, it has been progressively tweaked to become the country’s leading mobile payment app. It claimed 4.4 million users last month — this, in a country with just 9.6 million people.
Swedes in May used Swish to perform transactions valued at 7.5 billion kroner ($1.1 billion) — up sharply from 5.8 billion kroner (nearly $900 million) just last December.
One factor in the rise: The app was adapted in January to enable online transactions as well as in-store shopping.
Even so, Sweden is not yet a cashless society. Last year the value of coins and banknotes in circulation averaged 77 billion kroner (not quite $12 billion) — though that was down from 99 billion kroner ($15 billion) in 2011.
Money, money, money Must be funny In the rich man’s world Money, money, money Always sunny In the rich man’s world — ABBA